Warlords of Draenor: New Female Orc Model Revealed

Blizzard previewed the new female orc model for Warlords of Draenor today. Updated 3D models is one of the most-anticipated features of the expansion, and all races, save for Goblin, Worgen, and Pandaren, will be getting 3D Model updates.

Click the cut for the Artcraft blog and a recap of the previously-released WoD models!

Blizzard

Welcome to the third edition of Artcraft! I’m Chris Robinson, senior art director for World of Warcraft, and today we’ll be discussing the revamp of the female Orc model. As part of that, we'll touch on our overall character redesign philosophy, show before and after images, talk about our art process with this particular model, and give you a glimpse at some of her awesome facial expressions courtesy of our animation team. Before we start talking specifically about the female Orc update, I’d like to address some questions we’ve received regarding our goals for these revamps. Boiling it down to essentials, our primary focus is to upgrade the aspects of player character models that currently exist in-game.

We’re all creative people with tons of great ideas, and we could certainly keep designing and redesigning and never actually release anything —and while we’d no doubt have a lot of fun doing that, obviously we need to set specific goals so we can actually create finished artwork for you to see and play. That’s not always easy to do—we’re a passionate bunch, and we get incredibly excited about new features and want to do everything. Nonetheless, staying focused and keeping the scope reasonable (while still ambitious) helps us stay on track and avoid having to make painful cuts later on down the line. We really wanted to prevent that with the player-character revamp, so we made the decision early on to stay focused on improving what already exists in-game, and making sure we really nail it.

That said, we’ve also read your great ideas and feedback about features that you’d like to see as character customization options. Your collective voice matters to us, and we’d love to bring some of the coolest ideas to life someday if we can. We’ll continue to share behind-the-scenes information with you in these Artcraft pieces, and I look forward to giving you more insight into our plans for character models beyond the initial release of Warlords of Draenor.

Enough about philosophy—now on to the female Orc!

We’ve actually been working on this particular model for quite some time now. You may have caught some brief glimpses of her new model in the Warlords of Draenor announcement cinematic at BlizzCon. Since then, we’ve been balancing our effort among all of the models currently in progress, and she’s received some additional polish along the way.

When we first discussed the direction for this character, I think we all agreed right off the bat that we wanted to focus on her “warrior” side a little more. That means moving away from the more doe-eyed version we know now toward a character you would expect to see fighting on the front lines alongside any of her Horde brothers and sisters. We’re still ironing out the fine details, so the art you see here is subject to change, but I’ll let Senior 3D Artist Dusty Nolting and Lead Animator Steve Aguilar expand a bit on where we currently are with our green-skinned . . . oh wait, green and brown-skinned, long-tusked heroine.

Lead Animator Steve Aguilar: “The original female Orc’s facial expression is pretty much a blank stare, which sadly doesn’t convey much life or personality. We wanted to give her more of an edge so she would project a confident ‘Don’t mess with me!’ attitude. Now that these new high-definition models have a facial rig attached, the animators can bring to life the personality that has been so sorely missing. She now looks and feels more like you’d expect an Orc to. When you get your hands on the expansion, be sure to take a look at her talking animations, dancing animations, and emotes to see all the various expressions the team has created for her.” Character Artist Dusty Nolting adds: “Orcs are one of the most iconic parts of the Warcraft universe. Because she’s so identifiable, it was important for us to use the original female Orc as a starting point and stay true to the silhouette and proportions that existed. The goal was a new model with much higher fidelity, while still retaining that classic look. We want a strong female counterpart to the male, equally battle-ready in appearance, yet still feminine.”That’s all we have for the female Orc right now. We hope you’re continuing to enjoy this series as we invite you to meet the team, get some insight into our development process, and get an early look at some of the art we’re creating for Warlords of Draenor. Thanks, and see you next time!

Previously Released Models

At BlizzCon 2013, Blizzard previewed several new character models: male and female gnome, male undead, male and female dwarf, male orc, male tauren. Several weeks later, the female undead was unveiled as well.

Last month, the new female human model was previewed as part of the new "Artcraft" series.

Comentario de Madriel

Comentario de sickhammer

i was worried so much about this model but now that i saw the result all i can say is ... damn blizz, nice job

Comentario de walkman461

on 2014-02-19T12:10:24-06:00

I love them :) We did see a preview in the trailer, but now we can see the full project! I'm thirsty for more!

The long hair actually looks really beautiful with an orc female.

Comentario de runtimemess

on 2014-02-19T12:10:37-06:00

Man. These are looking really good.

Comentario de Rystrave

on 2014-02-19T12:23:27-06:00

Very nice! I liked femorcs, but I like them even more now :)

Comentario de steinmetz342

on 2014-02-19T12:30:46-06:00

Hopefully this will increase the Orc population and severely decrease the Elves

Comentario de Elfwithblade

on 2014-02-19T12:51:50-06:00

WoD Intensifies

Comentario de AkimboYojimbo

on 2014-02-19T12:54:07-06:00

Not a single peep about brown skin? I'm flabbergasted, I was always under the impression that this was a (relatively) huge demand for orc players.

Comentario de Iceveiled

on 2014-02-19T12:55:01-06:00

Looks good...kept the proportions about right while upping the detail. I was worried they'd try to over-feminize them with a tiny waist and not as muscular.

Comentario de Liall

on 2014-02-19T13:02:31-06:00

I hope we can choose to color them red or grey and not -just green-.

Comentario de Dharay

on 2014-02-19T13:25:56-06:00

Very nice, my orc rogue is going to look great i can see :)

Comentario de Jkpman

on 2014-02-19T13:33:37-06:00

I never thought I'd say this about an Orc female, but gorgeous.

Comentario de Nyosama

on 2014-02-19T13:33:53-06:00

Daaaaamn! Now I wanna marry my Orc DK...Blizzard is doing a marvelous job with the model reworks.

I hope we can choose to color them red or grey and not -just green-.

I'm looking foward to it too, a brown skinned orc looks so nice with these new models.

Comentario de rodoula

on 2014-02-19T13:34:22-06:00

nice job! but still I wanna see male -female trolls! ^^

Comentario de aknot666

on 2014-02-19T13:59:58-06:00

I had a boner.... Before wod, orc females were the most anthropomorphic models in the whole game.

Comentario de Edoreg

on 2014-02-19T14:39:08-06:00

Imo this is one of the best remakes so far!

Comentario de Rankkor

on 2014-02-19T14:44:45-06:00

Ok, asides from the fact that these look REALLY good, I have to note something funny:

EVEN ON THEIR UNDERWEAR orcs have to wear spikes. lol

Look at the pantywaist, fangs of some sort. Same for the bra straps. You know, one would think that'd be the one place where you DON'T want to place any spikes on.

Man, I gotta say I am loving these models, I may actually just start leveling new toons from scratch in WoD that aren't made of exclusively 1 race alone.

Comentario de Vishnuu

on 2014-02-19T16:06:11-06:00

When the new remodels are released, will people be able to recustomize their toons? I know we can customize to an extent with the barber, but we can't change faces or skins there.. And I'd like to be able to choose how my character looks if I don't like how it looks when the remodel conversions hit. I don't see why it would be a problem if we did :/

Comentario de FallenPumpkin

on 2014-02-19T16:15:55-06:00

I'm happy with this new model, she looks fierce while retaining a feminine face. My Warrior will look great come WoD!

Comentario de SoupNBread

on 2014-02-19T16:50:39-06:00

Was really worried about how the female orcs were gonna turn out considering my main mage is one. Looks like I can rest easy knowing she'll still look fierce :)